Descend
by BlackWolf888
Summary: "can you hear the Abyss singing in your head...?" Knight Artorias struggles in the caverns of Oolacile, as corruption sets in, bit by bit, in his body and soul. Three voices narrate his downfall, three voices recount his descend into the abyss.


You are falling through the Abyss.

At least, you think you are. Perhaps you are drifting. Or perhaps you are not moving at all. You don't know if you are moving, if you are still, if you are you.

You don't know if you exist, but you think you are falling.

It all started a lifetime ago. Or perhaps it was yesterday. It's hard to say. Time here is convoluted and it's hard to say when you are falling-

It all started yesterday. You walked the cursed roads of Oolacile with Sif by your side. Artorias the Abysswalker and the Grey Wolf Sif.

 _\- Artorias... -_

You traversed the Abyss once. You walked on it. You earned your name.

So you dared face the depths with your Greatsword and your Greatshield and your Grey Wolf by your side. You thought you could fight the spreading darkness, contain it, conquer it.

 **(except that I didn't, not really)**

It all started a few hours ago, when you heard the sighs of the prowling darkness and you didn't retreat. You couldn't retreat, even if you wanted to.

Sif wanted to retreat, but he couldn't - wouldn't - abandon you, he had to follow you, and you had to follow the dark path that led you to this bottomless chasm, and now you dragged him down with you.

You are thinking you should have hit the bottom by now. You should have hit something. Perhaps you are not falling. Perhaps it's your mind that's falling.

 _\- you're losing your mind, losing it, you're lost, you are falling and there is no bottom, not for you -_

 _\- no more the stable land of logic for you to walk on, Abysswalker -_

So you walked with loyal Sif down the stained stone paths of Oolacile, until you met the first ones: floating horrors with gleaming, taunting eyes, echoes of a humanity long lost. You met them, and yet you dared delve deeper. You wanted to reach the source of all darkness, the one that was singing alluringly in the depths, and defy him, and you were not afraid.

You were taught to be many things: strong and brave and righteous, but not afraid, never afraid of anything.

You weren't afraid when you dove head-first into the Abyss.

 **(I am now)**

So you crawled into deeper places

 _\- you should have run, Abysswalker -_

wanting to stand before the source, the heart, the writhing darkness itself. You heard the chorus of the damned chanting his name - or perhaps it was his voice, enriched by the million souls he had consumed, speaking with a million tongues:

Manus. Manus.

You still hear the chanting, deafening and distorted in your distorted ears as you fall - as your mind falls.

 _\- dance with me, Abysswalker -_

You wanted to confront Manus. But you never did.

You never took into consideration that the Abyss had grown too much around him, that it had come to life. He was protected by a labyrinth of ghastly humanities, an aggressive maze of corrupted souls.

 _\- but not as corrupted as you, no -_

They sang in an unholy frequency, and you found your soul humming along.

 _\- Manus, Manus -_

You had once found a path to cross the Abyss, but you also let a path for the Abyss to crawl into you. You never realized

 _\- the Great Abysswalker -_

but each step gave birth to a crease in your soul, a split in your skull. You were a cracked man long before walking down Oolacile with your Greatsword and your Greatshield and you Grey Wolf. A few more steps threatened to shatter you, and you hadn't realized.

And you dared delve deeper.

And they came for you. They came in hundreds, they came in thousands. The dark in the caves grew deeper. The dark in your soul grew deeper.

 **(Manus, Ma- no)**

 **(no)**

Their gleaming eyes pierced you, peered through you

 _\- and they recognized one of their brothers lurking in your heart, freshly awoken from his deep slumber, but you hadn't realized -_

and they marched towards you, an ungodly army of ghosts. You turned to Sif, who looked so tiny and scared, and whispered words of encouragement.

 **(only I wasn't talking to Sif, not really)**

So you tightened the grip on your sword

 _\- as if your sword could do anything to me -_

and you tried to fight, but you didn't know what you were fighting. Sif was howling and snarling and biting off chunks of darkness, but its nothingness burned his jaws, and he howled and wailed.

 **(no)**

Your brave companion. He howled and wailed and kept fighting what he couldn't fight.

 **(no, no, no, not Sif, not him, not- )**

And the darkness bit back. Bit chunks off of him this time, and blood painted his fur and his howls.

The Abyss has the color of fear. You realized that as it crept under your skull. Yet you gripped your sword and your shield and you fought, because that's all you knew how to do. But you didn't know that the Abyss can fight back. You didn't know it has its own, anarchic laws, that it comprised of immaterial matter, spoke with a million tongues, and fought with the strength of a million crazed men.

 _\- a million and one, 'cause now you are falling, too -_

 _\- now you pledge your soul to me, now I sing with your voice, Artorias -_

So you gripped your weapons to confront those cursed embodiments of vile intentions, and you try to mask the trembling of your hand by gripping tighter on your sword, you try not to think that you will fail everyone, that you have failed, that you were bound to fail.

 _\- you failed and now you are falling -_

You tried to stab the void and it laughed at your desperate grunts.

You tried to fight them, and their non-existent flesh scorched you.

 **(they are too many)**

You slashed at the Abyss and you felt the curse heavy on your Greatsword, too heavy for your hand, all of a sudden.

 _\- was it just your sword? -_

Creeping along your skin with cold, spider-like fingers, rooting around in the cavities of your brain: fear, your sly partner that waited patiently in the dark of your mind

 **(they are too many)**

waiting for the right moment to stab you with shadowy blades.

 **(breathe)**

So you gritted your teeth and you tried to keep fighting, because you couldn't go back like this, you couldn't go back without having tried.

 _\- you could never go back, anyway -_

You tried, but they were too many and you were hardly one. Their strength made bents in your armor. Their strength could shatter bone.

 _\- you found that out the hard way, didn't you -_

Corrupt humanities, floating like black fire, closing in to engulf you. Your mind went up in flames.

 **(breathe)**

But there was no air to fill your lungs, no light for your eyes, no sound but the chorus of the corrupted ones, magnified by the echo in your skull.

It was a few heartbeats ago, when you realized you couldn't win

 _\- deep down you knew that all along -_

and you lowered your sword and gripped your shield tighter.

You stumbled and you crawled as the Abyss was gnawing at your heart. You stumbled blindly through a storm of nightmares and shrieking laughs, wishing that the haze in your eyes would clear for just a second.

It was a few heartbeats ago, when you realized that there was no hope for you, that you had already failed. You already felt pieces of you being ripped away, bit by bit, mind and heart and soul crumbling with each forced breath. The silence was deafening, the void was dancing. The world was upside down

 **(am I already falling?)**

and yet your kept crawling your way through the pain, clinging on your shield, searching. Searching. Because you had realized there was no hope for you, but there was still hope for him.

 **(Sif)**

You wouldn't let him die because of you. He was far too brave, far too young and far too innocent to be lost like this, to be dragged mercilessly into oblivion. You... You were already too deep in to get out. You felt the darkness coursing though your veins. But he was not a part of this, he never was. He never brought the curse upon him by shaking hands with the Abyss. He never was so foolish - or desperate.

You had to get him out of there.

You stumbled sightlessly towards the place you thought you saw him last time

 **(but up is down and down is up)**

even though a horrible voice, hated and hateful, sang its cold song in the deep, trying to lure you; a song that stuck to your legs like slime and grappled them like shackles, making each step an ordeal, hardly allowing you to move.

 _\- no song, not my song, it was your mind that wouldn't let you -_

 _\- Artorias the Abysswalker, how you make me laugh -_

So you fought to walk through a world of pain as immaterial bodies hit you, and you kept going because you had to, for him, for

 _\- you? -_

for him.

And you saw a different light sticking out of the darkness, among the hollow eyes of the hazardous sprites: a white blur, so out of place, dancing around.

 **(Sif)**

The longer you stared at it, the clearer your vision became, like a warmth that spread through your body, fighting off that maddening voice that kept chanting, chanting, Manus, Manus.

 **(no more, no)**

 **(please, no more)**

And you saw him at last, grey fur half-dyed crimson, teeth bare, eyes wild. You thought you heard him howl through the chanting that grew louder.

You called out his name and decided to never do that again, as your lungs felt like being ripped apart. Blood arose through your throat and stood thick on your tongue.

 _\- falling apart already -_

 **(no more, please, no more)**

 **(Manus, Manus)**

You reached your staggering partner who looked at you afraid, because you may not be able to hear him, but he had heard you, heard the voice that was not your voice escape your lips.

You were a cracked man long before Oolacile, and now your glass armor creaked threateningly. But you are known as a knight with a will of steel, so you raise your shield to defend your friend and the ghost of you.

 _\- I did not bend your will of steel, but I did shatter it -_

They did shatter you, body and mind. You never heard the sound of crashing bone, but you felt the pain shooting through what was left of your existence. Your Greatshield dropped as your corpse of an arm hung pathetically from your shoulder

 _\- already breaking, bit by bit -_

as your last hope dropped dead, too.

 **(breathe)**

So you dragged your shield as unseen blades ripped your skin apart. Darkness crawled in though the wounds. Through your nostrils. Down your throat.

 **(suffocating)**

A crazed and helpless man, outnumbered and outmatched. The last thing you saw was that of grey fur dyed crimson and frightened eyes. Even as you started falling, you could see it. Grey fur dyed crimson and frightened eyes behind your shield. Your last hope, your last will, your last act before

 **(falling)**

shattering into a million pieces, breaking, drowning, falling, singing

 **(Ma** _n_ **us,** _Ma_ **nu** _s_ **)**

through pain and fear and shadows

 _\- M_ **anu** _s, Man_ **u** _s -_

through clouds of guilt, through thorns of hate

 _\- you_ **r** mi _nd i_ **s** _fal_ lin **g** _de_ e _p_ **er** _,_ de **ep** _er_ **-**

tearing away ribbons of memory, of feeling, of self

 **(nak** ed _in t_ **he da** r **k, f** _all_ **in** g **and suf** f **o** _cating -_

no more logic, no more you, only

 **(Manus)**

 _\- Manus -_

 **(** _-_ only the Abyss _-_ **)**


End file.
